Institutions and social change: a case study of the South African National AIDS Council

Powers, Theodore A.

doi:10.1080/23323256.2013.11500050

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…SANAC delegates were expanded to include the doctors, medical professionals and activists that made up the South African HIV/AIDS movement. While biomedical expertise retained its dominance within the institution, activists and representatives from community-based organisations had substantive input into the development of new national policy norms (Powers, 2013b).…”

Section: The Second Wave Of Hiv/aids Activism and The Campaign For Trmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge practices, waves and verticality: Tracing HIV/AIDS activism from late apartheid to the present in South Africa

Powers

2017

Critique of Anthropology

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As the South African HIV/AIDS epidemic enters its fourth decade, universal access to treatment has begun to extend the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. While the South Africa’s ruling party – the African National Congress – has seized on improved health to bolster their political profile, the key agitators in producing this outcome were South African HIV/AIDS activists. Narrative accounts of the extended initiative have focused on the organisations that led the campaign for treatment access, such as the Treatment Access Campaign. Reflecting present trends in social movement theory, the emphasis in these accounts has been on transnational and/or ‘horizontal’ ties in alliance building. This approach obscures continuities with early South African HIV/AIDS activism during the late apartheid era. The concept of verticality is proposed as a means of highlighting the role of interpersonal relationships in the development of institutions and transmission of knowledge practices that link the waves of South African HIV/AIDS activism.

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Section: The Second Wave Of Hiv/aids Activism and The Campaign For Trmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge practices, waves and verticality: Tracing HIV/AIDS activism from late apartheid to the present in South Africa

Powers

2017

Critique of Anthropology

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“…In fact, a study by Afrobarometer in Benin, Niger, Liberia, Togo, and Senegal found that only 4 in 10 people wanted to get vaccinated, citing skepticism around safety and efficacy of vaccines, as well as misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 (Seydou, 2021). Much of this hesitancy was based on the wider belief that the COVID-19 pandemic was planned by pharmaceutical companies and global elites to control humanity, and to reduce population on the planet (Powers & Pieterse, 2023).…”

Section: Engaging the Tensions Between Western And African Approaches...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although we do not profess to be decolonial experts, we deploy a decolonial approach (Ali & Rose, 2022;Fanon, 1965Fanon, , 1967 to decolonize global health interventions through a holistic understanding of African communities, especially in the way they reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic. Building from the works of scholars such as Powers and Pieterse (2023) on socio-cultural and political responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa and he Unites States of America, we want to contribute and get a conversation on ATKS as well as the understanding of alternative views to health by African communities going. Our aim is to draw attention to the silent battlefield of health knowledge systems through the case of COVID-19 pandemic experiences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embracing African Traditional Knowledge Health Systems in a HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 Pandemic Era

Saruchera,

Xaba

2023

Journal of Black Studies

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This article engages the perpetual denigration of African Traditional Knowledge System (ATKS) by African governments in favor of western biomedical approaches during the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic has once again put the spotlight on the alternative approaches to health and the need for a holistic and broader understanding of these practices in Africa. Using a literature review on health sectors across Africa and cases of traditional health medicines and use in selected countries, we show the Afro cosmo vision and understanding of health, and we make a case for a non-western health approach that is holistic, endogenous, and community-centered. We argue that health approaches need to be anchored on proper understanding of African societies, whose approach to health encompasses the spiritual, emotional, and physical aspect of one’s existence. Our work lends support for the importance of having a multidimensional holistic health system and approach for universal health coverage (UHC) toward the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Africa which encompasses ATKS in dealing with pandemics.

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“…For example, global norms for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention served as important points of leverage for the South African HIV/AIDS movement in its attempts to transform South African PMTCT policy. While WHO recommendations regarding dual-therapy PMTCT served as the foundation for updated South African policy guidelines, it was the work of the South African HIV/AIDS movement that created space for such recommendations to be discussed and considered within national health institutions (Powers 2013a). However, transnational influences operated differently with the HIV/AIDS policy process at the provincial level, where access to a Global Fund grant limited the impact of a national HIV/AIDS policy that included targets for expanded treatment access.…”

Section: Evidence Policy and Anthropologymentioning

confidence: 99%

In search of trust and efficacy

Nianggajia¹,

Fjeld²

2017

MAT

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Since the late apartheid era, the South African HIV/AIDS movement has mobilized infected and affected communities and cultivated alliances to establish and expand a national HIV/AIDS response that is based on human rights. In doing so, HIV/AIDS activists have actively engaged with political dynamics across the institutional domains of the state. Participant observation research with South African HIV/AIDS activists and analyses of the South African HIV/AIDS policy process therefore necessitate following the movement of research participants across many sites. Bringing together existing approaches to multisited research, the concepts of pathways, intersections, and hot spots are utilized to represent the social and spatial experiences of HIV/AIDS activists, state health administrators, and other policy actors within a unified conceptual framework.

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Institutions and social change: a case study of the South African National AIDS Council

Cited by 5 publications

References 21 publications

Knowledge practices, waves and verticality: Tracing HIV/AIDS activism from late apartheid to the present in South Africa

Knowledge practices, waves and verticality: Tracing HIV/AIDS activism from late apartheid to the present in South Africa

Embracing African Traditional Knowledge Health Systems in a HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 Pandemic Era

In search of trust and efficacy

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